Over the next few
days we will be pitching our ideas to a different media teacher to get another
view and more suggestions on how we could improve it. We will also be told the
sort of things that will work and the sort of things that won’t, which will be
extremely helpful in the making of the video. The next few weeks will be
focused on perfecting the idea and gaining a complete understanding of what it
is we want.
We are soon going
to make a mood board to get an idea of the tone of our thriller and I think this
is where everyone’s different ideas will come together and we will be able to
agree on an overall tone of all the aspects within the thriller. I look forward
to creating this video and I am enjoying the lead up to making it.
My inspiration originally came from tv shows like American Horror Story, however I am unsure if this kind of approach is going to fit with our new idea, I mainly focused on the music rather than the visual aspects.
I have been put in
a group with Georgia and Jemma. I am happy with this group because I
feel as if Georgia and I have very similar views on what we want the thriller
to be like and I really liked her original idea with the woman in the bath in
her clothes so we made the decision to incorporate our ideas and I am very
confident in our new thriller idea. We also incorporated Jemma’s idea of
someone going missing at the end and Jemma has been helpful throughout
planning. Sofia is away at the moment but I am confident that when she gets
back her input will be most helpful towards our making of this video. We
have been developing our idea throughout lessons and have made a storyboard to
get an idea of what we want it to be like and the type of shot types we would
be looking for.
At the moment during lessons we have been filming test shoots in an attempt to get an idea of what the sort of tone of the thriller will be like. We didn't film much as our thriller doesn't seem to work much without the use of props (tent) and the manipulation of lighting is crucial for adding suspense in our sequence, and we were unable to do this as it had to be done during the lesson where it was daytime so it was light outside and we didn't have the means to manipulate the lighting (like a good enough camera). We filmed these test shoots on my iPhone and it was really rough just to get an idea of how we are going to film it and the sort of locations we are looking for.
I feel as though sometimes our group can have disagreements on what we want because some of u have different interpretations of what the thriller is going to be like to others but I feel that once we begin to create mood boards and we all get a really clear idea of what we are doing the ideas will all merge and fall into place and everyone will be happy with the outcome.
Throughout the
other student’s presentations we were given a sheet in order to give both
positive and negative feedback about what we liked/ disliked. I feel this was a
really good way of getting to understand the idea fully and it meant you were
able to suggest how you could possible incorporate these ideas with your own if
you were to be put in a group together. Despite this being helpful, I found it
very difficult to come up with an “even better if…” idea because everyone had obviously
thought their ideas through thoroughly and had a solid plan of what they
wanted, and I found with a lot of people’s I liked them as they were and
altering their idea in any way would have made it worse rather than improving it.
My Original Idea for the Opening Sequence of a Thriller
“Zip” would be the name of it.
It would begin
with an establishing shot of a tent in the woods, and a light would be on in
the tent so you are able to see a silhouette of the two girls inside the tent.
There would be creepy old fashioned music playing and the camera would zoom in
on the zip as the music plays. When it gets close to the zip it would cut to
inside the tent where the two girls who would be sitting talking and listening
to music with headphones. There would be pan shots around the tent to show small
things and just generally set the scene. The girls would then look up and see a
figure walk past their tent so they would pause their music and zip open the
tent in order to look outside, as she zips open the tent, the camera would
follow the zip up and then cut to a pan of outside the tent where they would
see no one. They then go back to talking and listening to music and again,
think they see someone, look outside, no one there. This then happens a third
time but as they see the figure it appears they are walking towards them, so
she quickly opens up the zip as the camera follows yet again, and as she looks
out the tent the shot is of a close up of one of the girl’s faces so you are
able to see their expression change as the other girl rushes inside the tent
behind her. The main girl then crawls back into her tent, zips it up and joins
her friend in sitting at the back with her knees into her chest, rocking. At this
point there is a shot of both their legs and feet rocking back and forth. There
is then a shot of the zip at the bottom of the tent as it shakes around a bit,
and then begins to slowly open while in the background you can hear the girls
panting and making generally terrified noises. As the zip gets to the top of
the tent, the camera stays on there as you hear the beginning of a scream, but
it is soon cut out as the light turns out and it is pitch black for a few
seconds before you hear the noise of the tent being zipped up again and there
is then a close up shot of the zip as the light turns back on and the creepy
old fashioned music begins to play again and the camera zooms out but this time
there is only one silhouette of a person and they are looking around their tent
and in the background you can hear them shouting their friends name and panting.
The audience are left not knowing which of the girls died, how they died, or
where their body went. Zip is an image of safety, shows the fine line between
life and death, realism and surrealism.
Main Storyline
Everyone believes
the girl left alive was the killer of her friend, but she wasn’t, so while she
is being interrogated by the police daily, she is also being haunted by this
silhouette we saw in the beginning and sees it everywhere so slowly throughout
the movie she becomes more and more insane and ends up succumbing to the
‘silhouette’ and goes back into the woods where her friend disappeared and is killed my the same thing that killed her friend.
This is the sort of silhouette I would be looking for in the opening establishing shot and the ending shot.
